By B.C. Manion
When Wendy Hauver sets out to create a recipe, she thinks about the individual flavor of each ingredient.
She knows the taste of every spice in her cabinets because she’s sampled each one.
While cooking, she pays close attention to the aroma.
“I cook by smelling. I don’t taste as I’m cooking,” the Lutz woman said.
She also likes using lots of different kinds of olive oils and specialty food items she picks up from various locales when she travels.
“To me, it’s about the chemistry of cooking,” said Hauver, who in recent months has won three recipe contests and has had a recipe for a breakfast burrito posted on the Just Pinch Recipe Club website (www.justapinch.com).
She won the grand prize in the “Season’s Best Recipe Contest” from Publix in January.
Her “Shrimp and Sherry Rice” took first place in the “Ultimate Recipe Contest” by Aroma in February.
And, she won The Novemburger Hamburger Cook-Off contest sponsored last year by the St. Petersburg Times.
Besides bragging rights, Hauver has garnered prizes for her creative cooking ideas.
Her hamburger recipe that includes apples won the Publix competition, which was rewarded with a year’s worth of free groceries, valued at $5,200. She also won $250 in free products from Aroma.
The Rushe Middle School teacher said she doesn’t fuss over precision when she cooking her family a meal.
“I’m not much of a measurer,” Hauver said. “You kind of get to know what a teaspoon of this looks like, and what a tablespoon of that looks like.”
And, she’s not above using shortcuts in preparing meals.
“I try to keep everything I do relatively easy, you know like using pre-made things as much as possible,” Hauver said.
She relies on family — children Kaitlynn and Dillon Fleming, stepson Will Hauver and husband Bill Hauver — to be her chief tasters.
Hauver said was attracted to cooking when she was quite small. Even before she began learning to cook, she would pretend to make meals in her toy kitchen.
“My first big adventure in cooking was for my parents’ anniversary. I think I was 12. I cooked them dinner. I even had my mom’s friend go get a bottle of wine so I could serve wine with my dinner.”
It wasn’t exactly the grand triumph she envisioned.
“The mashed potatoes came out kind of weird-looking,” Hauver said, which made her nervous.
Then her mom, who is not a drinker, took a sip of wine to be polite – and developed a headache.
“I thought my cooking made her sick,” Hauver said, not realizing it was the wine.
It wasn’t the outcome she’d imagined, but she was undaunted.
While some cooks jealously guard their recipes, Hauver enjoys sharing hers. She also likes to try out new recipes.
She ran across the Justapinch website when she was surfing the Internet. It’s a great place to find free recipes, Hauver said.
She makes no claims of being top chef, but Hauver said her experience in the kitchen has taught her a trick or two.
She highly recommends that cooks clean as they go. That avoids those big messes at the end, she said.
She also suggests that cooks taste every ingredient they use.
When she did that, she said, her culinary world expanded.
Sunny Side in Breakfast Burrito
Ingredients
8 eggs
1/4 c. milk
10 oz. ground sage and pork sausage
10 oz. frozen O’Brien style hash browns
1 tsp. tarragon, dried
1 Tbsp. smoked paprika
1 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp. cracked black pepper
4 burrito-sized tortillas
1 c. arugula
1/2 c. shredded Colby cheese
1/2 c. prepared chunky salsa
Directions: Crack eggs into medium bowl. Add milk and whisk until fully blended (mixture should be sunny-yellow). Set aside.
Crumble sausage into a large frying pan. Cook until slightly browned. Add hash browns and continue to cook until hash browns are soft and starting to brown.
Pour in egg mixture, tarragon, salt, pepper and paprika. Cook until eggs are firm.
During the last few minutes of cooking, lay the tortillas over the mixture to steam them, so they soften.
When tortillas are soft, put a healthy line of the egg mixture down the center of the tortilla, top with arugula (washed and patted dry), Colby cheese and salsa.
Fold two sides of the tortilla inward, then roll tortilla to enclose ingredients.
